by River Jordan
“But I took his ring.” Blister wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I mean, after all, he was deader than a doornail, and it was just hanging there from his bony finger.” Billy looks at him without saying anything. Blister purses his lower lip, thinking. Continues trying to explain, “It was gold so I knowed it was worth something.” He looks back at the skeleton. “I think it might have been his wedding ring.” And he pauses. Billy stands silent. Listening to the howling that is creeping its way through the walls. Then he listens to it closer, as John Robert continues his confession of the soul.
“It’s not a good thing to take a man’s wedding ring. I mean, just any other old kinda ring, maybe it’s not so bad. Like a ring won in a poker game with a diamond stud, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad to take from a man. But a dead man’s wedding ring…”
Billy turns around suddenly, shines his lamplight on the cavern walls to the left of them. Listens to the howling again with his ear cocked. “Not so good. Not so good at all. That’s a widow’s ring. ’Course I didn’t know the widow. And with the looks of how long he’d been gone when I found him, well, you can imagine she was gone, but still…” And Blister’s mind filters off into a calmer state. He feels the beginning of a clean coming on. “You know what I did with that ring?” He waits. Billy doesn’t respond. “Well, do you?” He pokes him lightly in the back.
“What?” Billy isn’t really listening anymore. He is thinking.
“I sold it for liquor money. ’Course that was back in my drinking days, before all the trouble.” He rubs the scarred side of his face. “Sold a dead man’s widow’s ring for a bottle. Ain’t that something to be proud of?”
“No. I guess not.”
Blister’s shadowy past is dissipating. And the figure following him through the entrenched places of his heart and mind is fading.
“And you know something else I’m not too proud about?” Blister pauses. “I took all the coin money, too. Now, ain’t that a low-down desperate thing?”
Billy pauses from surveying the cavern walls and tries to place exactly how that wailing is reaching their ears so clearly when it shouldn’t be. He hears Blister with one ear, but something catches his attention and he turns around again. “What coin money?”
“What coin money you think? Coin money from this cave we’re standing in. Spent it all.” Now the look on Billy’s face changes so quickly, becomes so full of righteous wrath, that John Robert shrinks back some but keeps talking. He’s a watershed of guilt now. A confession that can’t be stopped. “Spent all of it. Just a little at a time.” Billy’s eyes appear to glow blue fire. Blister’s voice drops lower. He speaks slower. “Just a dollar at a time.”
The clock for Shibboleth has expired. The hands have come completely to a standstill. Only a reflection of Shibboleth remains. An image floating precariously on the surface of eternity.
Monday, 11:58 P.M.
Trice is standing in the Treasure Room. Normally, in the old days, before their time and beyond, a slight light would filter its way down here from the sky. More a memory of recent light than light itself. It would follow the path of dreams to their holding place. Trice finally pulls her eyes away from the cavern floor and looks up toward Nehemiah’s voice.
“You took the coins from the cave?” Billy is so incredulous, so heavy with the importance of this, so ashamed of how time has gone by, how he has forgotten his duty, that he forgets to be angry. He isn’t sure whom to be angry at.
Blister pulls himself up by the bootstraps. Pushes his chest out. He will not cower now in the face of truth in the telling. His apologies lie elsewhere. “I ain’t proud of it, but I did it. Sure did. It’s a sorry thing but what’s done is done.”
“Lord have mercy.” Billy runs his hand across his helmet because he has forgotten that it was there and meant to run his hand through his hair. “We got to get to the Treasure Room. Quick.” He turns around, surveys the wall again.
“What Treasure Room?” Blister shakes his arm. Asks again, “What Treasure Room?”
“The one where you stole the money.” He surveys John Robert again. “That wasn’t just ordinary money. Didn’t you know that?”
“Well, I guess not. And to tell you God’s truth, I reckon if I had, it wouldn’t have made a difference at the time.”
“We’ve got to get there with a quickness, I tell you. This is not good.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? It’s right through that tunnel.” Blister points, but Billy doesn’t follow him. “I’ll show you,” he says, but first he kneels down next to the skeleton. “Buddy, I owe your widow a ring. And I sure am sorry about that.” Then he stands and strikes the Zippo, holding it out in front of him with his right hand and cupping it slightly with his left. “C’mon, Billy,” he says, “I’ll lead the way.”
John “Blister” Robert has left the shadows of his past on the floor of Hell’s Jungle. He won’t be needing them anymore.
Cassie Getty pushes away the briars. Pulls at the overgrown vines covered in thorns. She has lost her raincoat and they rip and pull at her polyester shirt. Her heart begins to tremble, her lips to shake. She is so very tired. Ready to cry. She takes her pocketbook in her hand, and for a moment it looks like she will give up. Because for a moment she thinks about it. For a moment the shadow circling Nehemiah sends thoughts Cassie’s way. They are thoughts that say, No hope. There is no hope. But Cassie remembers that if she has been born at the end of all days, there must be a reason for it. One greater than her sitting and crying in a briar patch. Alone and afraid. So she breaks out in a wavering song. It is the first song that comes to her mind. This is the song of Cassie Getty in the dark of her dimension: “Get up, get up you sleepy head. Wake up, wake up the sun is red. Live, laugh, love, and be happy…” The voice filters through the moonless night, as she wanders singing her way.
Monday, 11:59 P.M.
Nehemiah steps into the Treasure Room alongside Trice. He is wondering what part of her to touch. How to hold onto something made of light. Then he feels her hand on his face, and he closes his eyes and thanks God for the life of Trice. When she speaks, her voice is melodious, but the words cut through him like a knife. “The treasure is gone.”
“Gone?”
“All of it. Years of it.” Trice looks down again. She still wears her headlamp, but it isn’t necessary. It is the light inside of Trice that shines now. And Nehemiah looks down with her. Where once there had been years and years and years of coins, years of hopes and wishes, there is nothing but bone-dry rock.
The wailing howl begins to shift. The shape begins to grow darker. Begins to materialize.
“We were the protectors, Nehemiah,” she says with the innocent honesty of a child. “And we failed.”
The shape begins to laugh. It is not a human laugh. It is something I hope your ears have never heard. Something I hope they never will. It is a laugh fueled by pain. And loss. And ending. The ground shifts, threatening. A sulfurous wind blows. The laughter increases in intensity until it is spitting in the face of what once was. And what was meant to be. And what is gone.
Obie shifts her attention away from the pastor and walks to the back of the church, where she closes the door. She turns around and approaches Zadok and Rudy, Ellen and Trudy. Then she gets in the pew in front of them, turned backwards facing them. She climbs up on her knees with her elbows resting on the pew and begins to tell them a story. It is a story of earth dirt people who had once upon a time almost come to the end of their days. When time stood still and then began to go away. When a great thief had surfaced and stolen what once belonged to them while they were sleeping. “But the people didn’t ever give up faith. Not all of it, anyway.” Obie looks over at the prostrate pastor. “Nope, they kept right on believing. Right up until the very end.” And as much as she tried to tell a lighthearted tale, it came back to her in one word, Believe. And finally, she let her story rest there.
Billy and Blister are making a posthaste
escape. They are moving as fast as their bodies can carry them toward the small round room that once held majesty and miracles. That once held the soft whispered wishes clasped tight in baby hands. Those hands so new or hands so old—all are babies’ hands in the end. All wishing with the heart of a child, with the faith of a child, for dreams to come true. For the passage of time to take its intended course. For hearts to be healed and mended. Wishing. Believing. And then tossing in a coin of mystery and faith that the Well would hold safe and sound underground until the time came for them to bloom. A hundred years of wishes. A thousand wishes worn and carried in heart pockets. From generation to generation. A thousand wishes stolen and spent. A dry hole where dreams were once born and hoped for.
The laughter of the beast grows in magnitude. A rocky, dry sound.
Blister stops in his tracks, his Zippo still before him. “I think I caused this,” he says to Billy without turning around.
“We all caused this.” Billy lays a hand on his shoulder from behind. “Keep moving, Blister.”
“But we don’t have the money to put back when we get there.”
“It’s not about the money, Blister.” Billy’s voice softens. “It never was.”
They are closer now. Have come up through an interior passage that Billy never knew existed. A shortcut from front to middle. A walk through Hell to the other side.
And they enter the room at a lower level. They step to the entrance of the Treasure Room, close enough to see inside. But what they see is not of any familiar form or fashion.
Nehemiah reaches for the light. And as he and Trice embrace, the shadowy shape of the beast begins to pull itself into this earthly realm.
A blasphemous stench rises in my nostrils.
This is what Billy and Blister see. The dark wings of a dog-like creature. A snarling, dripping mouth. Red eyes like coals that laugh at them as the earth trembles. As, somewhere above and near the entrance, Kate and Magnus hold one another in an increasingly tight embrace that means good-bye. As Obie spins the story of Once Upon a Time in Shibboleth, within sacred walls. As the pastor lies prostrate in prayer, seeing the same thing Billy and Blister see, just as if he were there. He is watching the beast have its moment in time. And he is so close to them that he begins to shake with cold. If Obie would turn and look at his nostrils, she would notice that the pastor is breathing frigid air.
The Midnight Hour
One clawed foot, and then another steps down. The shape rises on hind legs, a black wing whipping so close to their faces that they momentarily lose their breath. And yet it brings even colder air, until they are so cold they feel that they are blue.
I am unimpressed. But then, I am watching everything. I am watching, even now, as all the variations of the future line up before me. Even as the cave walls begin to crumble. As the threat of the death of all Shibboleth begins to rumble, I look beyond the veil of now into the time when the well-worn wishes of a people’s hopes fell easily through the earth, through rock and dirt and time, to rest protected in their Treasure Room. A room that was once guarded by small bodies with big believing hearts. One that is guarded still. Look and see.
The guardians are embracing. And in that embrace there is faith. And in that faith, there is a future. The seeds of destinies have been unleashed. The gold of purpose, the light of passion take their stand. They are of one mind. Of one heart. And the Presence is personified.
The beast stops laughing. Slowly turns around. It is confused. For it is only now, in the final hour, that this messenger of the Thief has realized what is taking place. And it takes one giant step forward to stop it. To slice through the thing that Nehemiah and Trice have become. But before it can reach them, Blister leaps without thinking through the air, grabs onto the slimy surface at just the point where the wings hook into the back. And here, in this close proximity where there is no human air, he bites down onto something inhuman until it screams with pain. It’s not the bite that inflicts hurt but the courage of it that sinks so deep. It is a man’s heart that has been long in the dark, a man who has stepped forward for unselfish gain, that causes the pain. It’s Blister’s bravery that sears the beast.
The dark wings flap back and forth. Rage spills from its gut. The walls shake and threaten here to swallow Trice and Nehemiah and Billy and all of Shibboleth. All of them once and for all.
Billy reaches into his right pocket and pulls out his hunting knife. He calmly opens it and with one last look at that strange unified apparition, one-half his brother and one-half his friend, he turns to face the beast head on, face-to-face. The wings writhe and flap wildly and knock his helmet from his head, but he doesn’t need the helmet light to guide him anymore. He follows the smell burning in his nostrils and leaps into the darkness with one intent. To give Nehemiah and Trice just a little more time.
Miles away, in the midnight hour of their existence, Sonny Boy lets out a long and mournful wail.
Cassie Getty pulls the thorny vines away from the stones. The skin on her hands is torn, and they are snagged and bleeding. If only Obie could see Cassie’s hair now. It is truly the worse for wear. She clears the opening to the well that is so overgrown and hard to find. Even Kate’s listening bench is covered now. “Lord, how’d I ever find it?” she asks and looks down into the darkness she knows is waiting but cannot see. She pulls herself up with both hands but she doesn’t quite make it before she falls back again. She tries one more time and is up, with a little help from an unseen hand. (Sometimes destiny needs a holy push. It’s called colaboring.) “Well now,” she says, trying to straighten her hair, brush it from her eyes, “I made it this far.” And straddling the well, with one leg in and one leg out, Cassie struggles to keep her balance as she opens up her purse. She doesn’t realize that the very pits of hell are trying to swallow up Shibboleth one great clawing bite at a time. The earth rumbles. And with her purse open on her lap, with both her hands opening up her change purse, there is one great shake from below and Cassie tumbles over the side and into the darkness. Where once there was water that was cold and clear to drink.
Billy can feel black breath on his face. And he can feel the blade of his knife penetrate something. But what would you call that something? And how does a weapon from one world fight a manifestation from another? What I can tell you is this: it is Billy’s heart and his intention in the fight that matters most. The fact that he has embraced his purpose, remembered his position. And he isn’t the only one.
There are walls going up around Shibboleth. Individuals are laying spiritual bricks. Each fighting with unusual weapons. Courage and compassion. Remembrances and recollections. Prayer and persistence.
Cassie Getty has worked long and hard through this endless night, in this final hour, to reach her destination. John Robert became the man he was meant to be when he took hold of the slimy-ridged back of a winged blackness, determined to protect his daughter if he had to ride through the gates of hell to do it. To protect them all. Butch, a man of action, is holding his prayerful position. And Magnus and Kate are weaving songs in the keys of forgive and forgiven. And another, most wondrous thing has occurred. Nehemiah and Trice have become their essence. And now those interlocking destinies have joined the passion and purpose of Nehemiah and Trice.
Nehemiah is extending his hand out toward the empty spot where the treasure once was held. He is calling something forth. The Treasure Room has become a new force. The light that emanates from it needs no other power than itself. The light pours out of the space of that rock. The light is cutting back the shadows. And it is growing still. As Nehemiah and Trice believe the same thoughts, see the same vision, there is a new sound from above them. It hasn’t even yet begun, but it is the sound of soft, metallic rain. A sound of wishes being found. Wishes upon wishes for an entire town. And wrapped up inside of each wish is a seed of hope that one day, one hour, one moment soon, the wishes will come true. Nehemiah and Trice can hear it. And so can you.
Cassie Getty is hanging by a r
ope. She has both of her short legs wrapped around the old water bucket. She is bruised and scarred. She looks up above her, where before she would have seen millions of stars, but now nothing. Just nothing. Her arms are wrapped around the bucket rope and her bottom’s on the bucket’s edge. If she were any larger than her five-foot frame, any wider in the hips, she’d be long gone, she figures. As it is, she has just enough backside to cushion the rim. But she thinks she may have dislocated something. A whole lot of somethings. Cassie’s pocketbook has fallen to the rock far below, but still clutched tight in her left hand is her change purse. Carefully, with a shaking right hand, she reaches farther around the rope, opens the tiny bag, and pulls out a quarter. She holds it firmly in her right hand, closes her eyes, and wishes that this darkness will not prevail. Then she drops the coin below. And takes out another.
When all the wishing has been done, when all the coins of Cassie Getty have rained down below, her wishes count up to twelve. There has been one for their deliverance, for the city of Shibboleth to be saved. And another that it would never be blind-sided again. And a special wish for the Heritage Oak in the square, that it and all that it holds would survive the storms of time. Cassie says aloud, “Let the stories never die.”
A special coin is dropped for all the children, for their innocence to be protected and treasured another thousand years. Another for the church, that what stands inside the people would be stronger than the building’s walls. One for fertile ground to grow good greens and all manner of other living things. And another for relationships (such a funny thing for Cassie to wish for), that the lonely would find comfort, that the angry would forgive and be forgiven. For the purposes of man to align themselves with the purposes of God. For the stars to be set right this night in the heavens (and as she drops the coin she wonders, is it really night?). The rope begins to sway, Cassie begins to turn. “For the sinners,” she says. And raining down another coin, she says, “For the saints, of which I ain’t.” And then one last coin remains. One last coin is clasped tight inside Cassie’s palm. It’s her special secret treasure. It’s a gold coin from her grandmother. Passed down from one lifespan into the next. Then Cassie makes a final wish as the bucket sways, as the earth below her trembles, as the stone walls of the well begin to crumble. “Let the river run,” she says, “let the waters spring forth in dry, dry places.” And she opens up her fist and the last coin falls down and out of sight.